Thursday, May 6, 2010

Lingerie Guard Follow-Up

Since I posted this I found some more lingerie guards. I can now reasonably date these items as I have also found the patent for them.  Unfortunately the digital scanner they used screwed up the page so you can't read all the specifics of the patent, but you can see that the patentee is Jeanne Miller, of Muskegon, Michigan (my home town), and she patented the lingerie guard in 1924 in Grand Rapids, Michigan (my current town).  I had no idea she was a homie.  Subsequent information shows she located her factory, the Pin-In Lingerie Guard Co at 706 W kalamazoo Ave, in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I know it was still there in 1935 because I found an online city directory showing someone working there.  Sadly, I could not locate Jeanne Miller in either the 1920 or 1930 census, as she may have had a different last name than the one on the patent.

It looks like our Jeanne had a sex-change operation--that, or speaking French was no longer cool.

Here's a link to that address.  Seems it's an 1860's house.  This real estate listing shows the upper apartment.  Jeanne and company probably ran the business in one of the downstairs rooms.

1 comment:

  1. Cool info thnx just found some out here at an estate sale in old Pasadena.....!

    ReplyDelete

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